"She tossed her spectacles onto the bed and lit a candle. Crossed the room and opened the window as wide as it would go, beckoning in a hiemal breeze."
"She hadn't put any wards in the living room or adjoining sunroom, and dark shadows roiled within, as though the house were having a tirrivee at having been forced into order."
"A landsman could hardly have worn this garb and shown his face, and worn and shown them both with such a galliard air, without undergoing stern question before a magistrate, and probably incurring fine or imprisonment, or perhaps an exhibition in the stocks."
"We have had, and may still have, worse things to tell of him; but none, we apprehend, so pitiably weak; no evidence, at once so slight and so irrefragable, of a subtle disease, that had long since begun to eat into the real substance of his character."
"The helpful inmate had departed, without one backward glance to gather up the meed of gratitude, if any were in the hearts of those whom she had served so zealously."
"I give him a pamphlet gladly, and he places it on a pile of other pamphlets from other companies, on the handy pamphlet table in his home's entryway, an aedicula to life's mysterious accumulation of printed collateral."
Temporary by Hilary Leichter, p 133 of the Coffee House Press paperback
"Sometimes they made islands or great mountains enclosing lakes of deep turquoise-blue, or liquid amber, or chrysoprase-green; sometimes dark headlands jutted into strange, lost seas; sometimes slender strips of wonderful lands joined other wonderful lands together."
"In the mountains behind Ushuaia lived the Selk'nam (also known as Ona) Indians, guanaco-robed hunters of the harsh Fuegean mountains and plains, whom the Yamana feared."
iThe Future of Ice by Gretel Ehrlich, p 13 of the Vintage paperback edition
"I followed the orthodromic routes of migrating arctic birds, their great, arcing circles as they flew between Arctic and the icy coasts and islets of the South Atlantic Ocean: arctic terns, long-tailed skuas, jaegers, and sanderlings, among others."
The Future of Ice by Gretel Ehrlich, p xv of the Vintage paperback edition
"This took a considerable time, and Stephen looked steadily about him, examining the cabin from side to side: it was like a larger version of the Desaix's stateroom (how glad he was the Desaix was safe) and it, too, was singularly beautiful and full of light – the same range of curved stern-windows, the same inward-leaning side-walls (the ship's tumblehome, in fact) and the same close, massive white-painted beams overhead in extraordinarily long pure curves right across from one side to another: a room in which common domestic geometry had no say."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 407 of the Norton paperback edition
"Jack stuffed his glass into the pocket of the grego Stephen had brought him, ran up to the masthead, twined himself firmly into the rigging and trained the telescope in the direction of the pointing arm."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 162 of the Norton paperback edition
"The felucca was almost touching now, and a tame genet – a usual creature in Barbary craft, on account of the rats – stood on the rail, looking eagerly up, ready to spring."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 156 of the Norton paperback edition
"A sloop with the depth of a mere ten feet ten inches cannot rival a ship of the line for dank airless obscurity below; but the Sophie did astonishingly well, and Stephen was obliged to call for another lantern to check and lay out his instruments and the meagre store of bandages, lint, tourniquets and pledgets."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 130 of the Norton paperback edition
"He took two or three turns, looking up at the yards: they were braced as sharp as the main and foremast shrouds would allow, but they were not as sharp as they might have been in an ideal world, and he made a mental note to tell the bosun to set up cross catharpings – they might gain three or four degrees."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 74 of the Norton paperback edition
"'Don't ee do it, sir!' he cried, covering the touch-hole with his hand. 'If you could but see her poor knees – and the spirketting started in five separate places, oh dear, oh dear.'"
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 70 of the Norton paperback edition
"He showed Jack the two twelve-pounders with great good will. 'As pretty a pair as the heart of man could desire,' he said, stroking their cascabels as Jack signed for them; but after that his mood seemed to change – there were several other captains in front of Jack – fair was fair – turn and turn about – them thirty-sixes were all in the way and would have to be moved first – he was precious short of hands."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 62 of the Norton paperback edition
"In any case, his mind was too busy to be seeking after an elusive neume, for he was about to report to a new captain, a man upon whom his comfort and ease of mind was to depend, to say nothing of his reputation, career and prospects of advancement."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 54 of the Norton paperback edition
"How did he manage to make a living in the sparse thin grass of that stony, sun-beaten landscape, so severe and parched, with no more cover than a few tumbles of pale stone, a few low creeping hook-thorned caper-bushes and a cistus whose name Stephen did not know?"
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 53 of the Norton paperback edition
"And where should we be without them, God forbid: and, indeed, the skill and dispatch and dexterity with which Mr Florey at the hospital here everted Mr Browne's eparterial bronchus would have amazed and delighted you."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 37 of the Norton paperback edition
"It was not until I had been some years in Ireland and had written my little work on the phanerogams of Upper Ossory that I came to understand how monstrously I had wasted my time."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 36 of the Norton paperback edition
"She bore as much resemblance to her ordinary self as the rigid bosun, sweating in a uniform coat that must have been shaped with an adze, did to the same man in his shirt-sleeves, puddening the topsail yard in a heavy swell; yet there was an essential relationship, and the snowy sweep of the deck, the painful brilliance of the two brass quarter-deck four-pounders, the precision of the cylinders in the cable-tier and the parade-ground neatness of the galley's pots and tubs all had a meaning."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 30 of the Norton paperback edition
"The book's cover features a painting by the nineteenth-century artist Jean Léone Gérôme titled The Snake Charmer. A blue-tiled wall, an audience of armed men, a fipple flute player, and a naked boy whose back is to us. A large, thick snake is coiled around the boy's muscular body."
Too Much and Not the Mood by Durga Chew-Bose, p 34
"On the walls of the Castel dell'Ovo, Carlo Andreoli makes out the signs of the sea, the soft tufa eroded by the ever-rising damp, spurts of froth appear, stars flicker, fireworks in the distance, white fires moving, renewing."
Malacqua by Nicola Pugliese, translated by Shaun Whiteside, p 10
"I know the op shop doesn't open till eleven on Saturdays, that the motor that roars and roars at 10 p.m. at the bottom of the street is not some crazed hoon but the railway men mending the line."
From "White Paint and Calico" by Helen Garner, p 18 of Everywhere I Look
"In old trucks, carburetors are finicky: sensitive to particles, to climate, to air, to residue, and to tinkering. Gasoline congeals in the carburetor's orifices, plugging the venturis with a gelatinous film."
"The sound is like a credit card being scraped over a comb, or a guiro percussion instrument or, like the corncrake's onomatopoeic Latin name, Crex crex."
"And I recalled the sluggish misgivings I'd felt when the man took the money out of my hand and held up a tethered bundle of muricated sprigs for me to somehow take hold of in return."
"In many ways this aerated point of view appeared more troubling than the costive statement from which it had originated, and I was quite defeated in my efforts to distinguish anything amusing about it."
"It had something to do with love. About the essential brutality of love. About those adventitious souls who deliberately seek out love as a prime agent of total self-immolation."
"But shake out a palmful of flaked almonds and you'll see they closely resemble fingernails that have come away from a hand which has just seen the light of day.
Black jam and blanched fingernails, slowly sinking into the oozing burgoo!"
"It was a bitter cold Sunday, wet and misty, dismal, dreich, everything as dripping and grey as only Inverness in November can be; we stood at the Memorial by the river in our uniforms with the Provost and his wife and some people from the council and the British Legion, and we each stepped forward in turn below the names carved on it to do this thing, the weight of which, the meaning and resonance of which, I didn't really understand, thought I'd thought I knew all about war and the wars, until I got home after it and my parents, with a kindness that was quiet and serious, sat me down in the warm back room, made me a mug of hot chocolate then sat there with me in a silence, not a companionable silence, more mindful than that."
"Good voice" by Ali Smith, p 35 of Public Library and Other Stories
"Aunt Oona's messages—except for three "Where are you, mavourneen?" inquiries—were all reminders that Sean O'Reilly was planning to read "The Passing of the Gael" at the Daughters of Ireland meeting, and the whole family was going."
"Her left hand is studded by four silverset cabochons of greenstone, and there's a star sapphire with three dolphins circling it deiseal in gold on her right hand."
"Same as ever. His magnum opus just gets longer and longer, and the title now changes daily."
"What was it, last you heard?"
"The Proud Puriri of Percipience ... A Disturbingly Dialectical Distillation of This Nation's Solipsistic Soul, Wrought from the Fabric of Our Unconscious and the Wiry Strands of a No. 9 Sable Brush..."
"Overhead, lounging across doorways and oblivious to my progress, floated half-naked stucco women with dusty bosoms; higher still, edging towards the invisible land that extends behind us, the heads of National Revivalists grew from the facades like giant polypores."
Empty Streets by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 87 of the Dalkey Archive paperback edition
"He had two deep folds in his cheeks running from his nostrils past his mouth and the long tuft of black beard on his chin was tied into three little tails like the barbels of a cranky hornpout."
"He had two deep folds in his cheeks running from his nostrils past his mouth and the long tuft of black beard on his chin was tied into three little tails like the barbels of a cranky hornpout."
"Bryony is not having her first drink of today until 18.00 so the big question is what to do between now and then. The obvious answer is admin, but that is very boring. And also quite hard at this lazy, pre-evening, pinkish, oscitant time of day."
"Neither were we dwarfish, or of a giantlike stature, but proportional, with brown hair, sound teeth, sweet breath, and tunable voices—not given to wharling in the throat, I mean, or speaking through the nose, unless we had a cold—yet we were none so prone to beauty as she, and I perhaps least of them all."
"And then, when he had finished his supper, he would get out his collection of patibulary treasures, and over a bowl of negus finger lovingly the various bits of gallows rope, the blood-stained glove of a murdered strumpet, the piece of amber worn as a charm by a notorious brigand chief, and gloat over the stealthy steps of his pet tiger, the Law."
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, p 153 of the Cold Spring Press paperback
I didn't know this in the sense of "A narrow piece of tape used to bind or edge fabric" until this:
"If you remember, in the eye of the law fairy fruit was regarded as woven silk, and many days were wasted in a learned discussion of the various characteristics of gold tissues, stick tuftaffities, figured satins, wrought grograines, silk mohair and ferret ribbons."
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, p 113 of the Cold Spring Press paperback
"Please, Master Ranulph, be a good chap and tell me what took you at supper time when that doitered old weaver came in. You gave me quite a turn, screaming like that."
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, p 65 of the Cold Spring Press paperback
"Dame Marigold, as she sat watching him, felt that he was rather like a cockchafer that had just flounced in through the open window, and, with a small, smacking sound, was bouncing itself backwards and forwards against its own shadow on the ceiling – a shadow that looked like a big, black velvety moth."
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, p 35 of the Cold Spring Press paperback edition
"Every point of interest, every clue to the past, every quoit and barrow, every wayside cross, every round and camp and every ancient barton of west Cornwall draws his foot-borne curiosity."
Rising Ground by Philip Marsden, p 192 of the University of Chicago Press hardcover
"Early the next morning, I rose at dawn to walk over the hill to Glastonbury. I'd tried once before, one January years earlier, but fell in a rhyne down on the Levels and lost heart."
Rising Ground by Philip Marsden, p 103 of the University of Chicago Press hardcover
"The Arthurian tales have more recently brought other camp-followers to Tintagel, the sutlers of crystals and wind-chimes, the tarot-readers and soul-curers."
Rising Ground by Philip Marsden, p 88 of the University of Chicago Press hardcover
"When one investigator in New York started to negotiate the terms of leaving a bar with a woman late at night, she demanded that he buy her a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey. And while he was it it, could he come with her to the butcher to pay an outstanding bill? (It never seems to occur to the investigators that the women they write up might have recognized them for what they were, and decided to mess around.)
'I told her all the butcher shops were closed now,' he wrote, 'and I didn't care to travel around from store to store, she got sore at me and called me a piker and told me to beat it.'"
"A woman reclines in a long dress with fine floral patterning on a bed with a checkered bedspread. Her head scarf is polka-dotted. The bed is placed in front of a wall, which is draped with a paisley cloth. And ever her face is marked with cicatrices."
"Portrait of a Lady" by Teju Cole, p 129 of Known and Strange Things
"He had a feeling for the inanimate, too, for ruins and comminuted landscapes, places that have been reduced to their smallest units by the forces of nature and history."
"Poetry of the Disregarded" by Teju Cole, p 42 of Known and Strange Things
"In the Neapolitan country, where everybody was a spy, a soldier, a priest, or a lazzarone, the shameless beggars of all four denominations incessantly pounced on the Bottle and made it a pretext for extorting money from me."
- "The Italian Prisoner" by Charles Dickens, in The Uncommercial Traveller
"Every other day she was choking with a cold. But there wasn't much wrong with her voice on those days. "If I wasn't hoarse," she'd say to you after the funeral, "I would really have keened him." The lying latchico!"
The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 141
"...So I only had ten miserable pounds worth of an altar, despite the fact that I shitted bricks chasing every old skanger and scum bucket putting money on their altars."
The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 70
""Downing poteen like water," she said. Off I went. He was out of his tree and nobody in the house was able to hold him down. You couldn't say they weren't a bunch of wimps..."
The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 37
"I was spreading a bit of manure for Patrick down in Garry Dyne when one of Tommy's young ones came up to me. "Maggie Frances is dying," she said. And what do you know, Kitty, the young one, was just going in the door when I reached the end of the haggard."
The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 7
"I have the crucifix on my breast anyway, the one I bought myself at the mission...But where's the black one that Tom's wife, Tom the crawthumper, brought me from Knock, that last time they had to lock him up?"
The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 3
"She supposed it was inevitable that, in due time, these men would take those liberties with her that have ever been claimed as angary by irregular fighting men, who have willfully severed themselves from the softening feminine influence of civilized society, with those women who have had the misfortune to become their captives."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 469 of the Spectra trade paperback
"As far as Miranda could see—all the way to Nanjing, maybe—it was lined with Western and Nipponese boutiques and department stores, and the airspace above the street was besprent with almond-size aerostats, each with its own cine camera and pattern-recognition ware to watch for suspicious-looking congregations of young men who might be Fist cells."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 297 of the Spectra trade paperback
"Many of the persons who held such opinions were, of course, guilty of the most nefandous conduct themselves, and yet saw no paradox in holding such views because they were not hypocrites themselves—they took no moral stances and lived by none."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 191 of the Spectra trade paperback
In The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is also called a "Propaedeutic Enchiridion" (p 184 of the Spectra trade paperback edition)
"preparatory study or instruction", per Merriam-Webster
In The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is also called a "Propaedeutic Enchiridion" (p 184 of the Spectra trade paperback edition)
"Dr. X was unusually clever at taking advantage of the principle of grith, or right of refuge, which in modern usage simply meant that Coastal Republic officials like Judge Fang could not enter the Celestial Kingdom and arrest someone like Dr. X."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 126 of the Spectra trade paperback
"The nacelles containing the tiny air turbines, which gave such devices the power to propel themselves through the air, were prominent; it was built for speed."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 98 of the Spectra trade paperback
"I hope the above poem illuminates the ideas I only touched on during our meeting of Tuesday last, and that it may contribute to your paroemiological studies."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 83 of the Spectra trade paperback
"This was nothing more than a small propeller, or series of them, mounted in a tubular foramen wrought through the body of the aerostat, drawing in air at one end and forcing it out the other to generate thrust."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 56 of the Spectra trade paperback
"Bud had paid a few visits to the local laager, studied some of their training ractives on his home mediatron, put in some extra hours at the gym trying to meet their physical standards, even gone to a couple of horrific bible-study sessions."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 30 of the Spectra trade paperback
"All the other thetes, coarcted into the tacky little claves belonging to their synthetic phyles, turning up their own mediatrons to drown out the Senderos, setting off firecrackers or guns—he could never tell them apart—and a few internal-combustion hobbyists starting up their primitive full-lane vehicles, the louder the better."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 35 of the Spectra trade paperback
"There were a bunch of coenobitical phyles—religious tribes—that took people of all races, but most of them weren't very powerful and didn't have turf in the Leased Territories."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 30 of the Spectra trade paperback
One of the section titles in The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson is "A thete visits a mod parlor; noteworthy features of modern armaments." Per the Collins English Dictionary (http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/thete), a thete was "a member of the lowest order of freeman in ancient Athens."
"It didn't look like a difficult task, since the back of each terrace was studded with all kinds of flues, hooks, windowsills, gas pipes, stringcourses, planks of wood, missing bricks, and irregular patches."
A Plague of Bogles by Catherine Jinks, p 270 of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt hardcover edition
"Christine's Chemin de long estude is a calque of Dante's "lungo studio," that is, Christine explicitly conceives her literary career as a learned continuation in the vernacular of the poetic archievement of Vergil."
- Earl Jeffrey Richards's Introduction to Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies, pp xlvii-xlviii of the Persea books 1998 paperback
"Her top half was clothed in a spencer, whose hardier material hid the curves her sodden dress could not fail to display. The whole shining sinuous length of her tail emerged from her dress below."
"And have you seen this Miss Prunella Gentleman, of whom so much is said?" said Lady Throgmorton, as she sat supping a cup of black bohea with her friend Alethea Gray."
"The Sorcerer Royal's servants had formerly been bond by a geas against disclosure of any detail of his household affairs, breach of which was visited by the most terrible revenge."
"Mrs. Lale was a sonsy, comfortable-looking creature, and it seemed as though a smile would better fit her countenance than its angular look of disapprobation."
"Oreo held her breath in case she had made a drastic error and had mentioned the roach problem in one of the three buildings in New York that did not have them.
Mrs. Schwartz gave not an eye-narrow, not a lash-flutter. Oreo was reassured that she had not blown her cover through a blattid blunder."
- Oreo by Fran Ross, p 176 of the New Directions paperback
"She also decided that since this was, after all, her quest (so far a matter of low emprise), she would cross all the other clues off her list whenever she felt justified in doing so."
- Oreo by Fran Ross, p 97 of the New Directions paperback edition
"But the Great Report won't be composed in a study; it will come out of the jungle, breaking cover like some colourful, fantastic beast, a species never seen before, a brand-new genus, flashing, sparkling—fulgurating—high above the tree-line, there for all to see."
Satin Island by Tom McCarthy, p 62 of the Knopf hardcover edition
"I hadn't fought ten seconds before I felt this softness in him, realized all that quality of modern upper-class England that never goes to the quick, that hedges about rules and those petty points of honour that are the ultimate comminution of honour, that claims credit for things demonstrably half done."
Tono-Bungay by H.G. Wells, p 31 of the Everyman paperback
"The creative man will not, then, be he who has deduced something new ex nihilo, btu he who has identified it, by intuition, by trial and error, by chance — or by that infinite patience which for Flaubert was a sign of genius — amid the gangue that enclosed it and concealed it from our eyes."
- Umberto Eco, in his foreword to Tristano by Nanni Balestrini
"The traveller had taken off his cloak and looked very slender and elegant in his pinstripe suit. He was smoking a papirosa and giving instructions at the same time."
Pietr the Latvian by Georges Simenon, translated by David Bellos, p 11 of the Penguin paperback edition
"I did my bit, bringing up those blessed boxes. I leave the titivating to Lilian. She loves all that sort of thing. She can titivate for England, she can."
"The dreech weather had drawn in a few more than usual at this time of day but I saw no close acquaintance and I had a mind to drink a quiet pot of tea and glance at the early edition of the evening paper, content in my own company."
The Mist in the Mirror by Susan Hill, p 4 of the Vintage paperback edition
"As evening drew in, we turned a bend and caught a first glimpse of Simla's bungalows and country houses rising up from among the deodars of the ridge."
"The white rat stepped cautiously into the room, nostrils flaring. Satisfied of its immediate safety, the rat darted up Teo's desk and sat atop her paperwork. It wore black velvet barding blazoned with a silver spiderweb; a leather scroll case the size of a cigarette hung around its neck."
"It is full of people working magic—warlocks, witches, thaumaturges, sorcerers, fakirs, conjurors, hexers, magicians, mages, shamans, diviners, and many more—from the lowest Certified witch right up o the most powerful of enchanters."
The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume 1, by Diana Wynne Jones
"Dallington's story had satisfied both Lenox and Jenkins as to the motivation of the brother and the sister, a long cathectic hatred of Queen Victoria, bred into the bone by their ancestors and their father, and flourishing, perhaps, without the soft guidance of a mother."
"Sophronia raised up her Depraved Lens of Crispy Magnification, a present on her fifteenth birthday from Dimity's brother, Pillover. It was essentially a high-powered monocle on a stick, but useful enough to keep at all times hanging from a chatelaine at her waist."
"In September I planted a line of spruce saplings along the west portico, against the better judgment of Rodgers—and now they have all but one of them died, which I view as final and irrefragable evidence that I have entered my senescence."
A Death in the Small Hours by Charles Finch, pp 274-275
"Back in her apartment she pins Amsterdam to the wall above her bed, beneath another old postcard: four brightly painted totem poles and a few muskeg spruce, leaning over a marshy inlet."
"Then came the strange events that I wrote off at the time as a kind of self-undermining parapraxis. First I forgot to pack the book; then I forgot to collect my bag from the carousel in the airport."
"After I've had some soup, I go and get in the bath with two of the homoeopathy books: Kent's Lectures on the Materia Medica and a rather strange-looking volume called Literary Portraits of the Polychrests."
"Elizabeth, heavily pregnant and desperate, was there waiting while her husband and sons tried to find work in the area, having been turned away from the Tavistock stannary."
PopCo by Scarlett Thomas, p 172 of the Harcourt paperback edition
"Roast chicken and kumera and peas from the back garden, and peaches and nectarines with cream for pudding, and Beverley had been allowed a glass of sherry."
"Beyond the vision of her pumping knees on some desperate errand, and the bloodied dress above them, and playing in the yellow dust under the macrocarpa hedge, and a young women turning cartwheels on the lawn—whom she assumes to be Rita—she has only the scantiest memories of her very early life."
"If you go up to Coromandel these days, up to the subtropical North, where the pohutakawa trees line the rocky coast, and the dolphins sport in a warm sea, and in the deep dark kauri forests where the tui birds break the silence and the bellbirds chime, you could well believe that the spirit of the taniwha has been put to sleep."
"I remember what Aroha said about the kehua, the spirits of the homeless dead, and how they like to inhabit animals and birds: the screech of the morepork bird in the velvety Maori night is a case in point."
"The early sun is making the snow sparkle, and the red spindleberries glow in the hedge the far side of the garden, so it's all white, green and red, like the Italian flag."
"And then came the mud. In it sloshed, through the broken windows. Thick mud, watery mud, rocky mud, mud with beveled-glass shards, mud with window muntins, mud with grass, mud with barbecue utensils, mud with a mosaic birdbath."
"Turning up the deep astrachan collar of his long coat, the stranger swept out of the shop, with the air, as Miss Fritten afterwards described it, of a Satrap proroguing a Sanhedrin. Whether such a pleasant function ever fell to a Satrap's lot she was not quite certain, but the simile faithfully conveyed her meaning to a large circle of acquaintances."
"Quail Seed" by Saki, in The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories (p 139 of the NYRB edition)
The poultry followed her in interested fashion, and swine grunted interrogations at her from behind the bars of their sties, but barnyard and rickyard, orchard and stables and dairy, gave no reward to her search.
"The Cobweb" by Saki, p 109 of The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories (NYRB paperback)
"And yet, for all that it stood so well in the centre of human bustle, its long, latticed window, with the wide window-seat, built into an embrasure beyond the huge fireplace, looked out on a wild spreading view of hill and heather and wooded combe."
"The Cobweb" by Saki, p 104 of The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories (NYRB paperback)
"As for Cassandra, who was expected to improvise her own prophecies, she appeared to be as incapable of taking flying leaps into futurity as of executing more than a severely plantigrade walk across the stage."
"The Peace Offering" by Saki, p 75 of The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories (NYRB paperback)
"Still, despite the tight shackles and endless drudgery, despite the difficulty in dealing with all this, how should I say, journalistic prose--for that's what it is: lifeless, banausic drivel that rushes like a torrent and lacks all color and rhythm, except that it seems to come in waves, but you could at least pace yourselves by contending with these waves one at a time, consider only the number of strokes to be made between each strike of the clock, instead of dwelling on the calendar."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 156
"So they gathered around a horrible toadstool covered in blemishes and eschars, for these made it look a fitting exemplar, or perhaps it was more a leprous garden gnome, who carried his personal tragedy with him everywhere he went, and because of his dual nationality bumped into us more often than not."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 134
"How is it possible that within a belletrist culture like that one, there was so much admiration for the works of Zi--with their soppy sentimentalism and bumpkin sophistication, their bad grammar and archaic anacoluthia, and all those gigantic leaps away from the slightly credible to the wholly fabulous?"
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 129
"His voice was certainly the strangest I've heard from a creature of his kind-- at once surd and resonant, clipped and lyrical, with euphonious vowels broken by brusquely stressed consonants that reminded me a little of Careclough's Scottish brogue."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 114
"Many years later, once we saw through his mask, that symbol of his claudication, we summoned the image of Von Aschenbach, as interpreted by Dirk Bogarde in the Visconti film (14, reference to Gathorne-Hardy, anecdote in the book about English public schools)."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 77
"A whole argot of sectarian terms to designate where: first, the "paludinal glitterati" in Septic Midrash, then the "phalansterian demographic" constructed to "contradict the anecdote.""
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 68
"Since then, having succeeded in restoring them to that previous state in which their livelihoods depended on a meager spring (one that delivers on a monthly basis), he eases a vellication of remorse with the thought that they would be amply remunerated with freedom of time and leisure, although he knows the leisure of redundancy cannot truly be enjoyed."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 55
"Critics and friends had already rebuked him for his honeyed volubility, and also that "nothing to say" which the terricolous Hardy suspected lay behind his ponderous, Tyrian diction."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 52
"When he saw them again, on that morning in August after returning from a visit to the city, he found them quite as submissive and conceited as ever; and he, once again trapped in their especial variety of confessional antechamber (in which they oft be labored him with successions of halting effusions), sought escape by firing off--or more properly, stammering--a bêtise on the "perfumed scent" of his butler's arrhythmic respiration, which was indeed perceptible to him in more than one--and to more than one--sense."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 47
"Nicasio sits with his barracan jacket slightly open, his hand reaching--in plenipotentiary gesture--for his wallet ("ample as a library," according to Dos) so he can pay the bill."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 7
Having now read The No Variations several times in the course of translating and editing, I was continually amused by its author's mock affectations, moved by his corybantic delight in language, and, despite the difficulty, I believe it has that quality proper to all fine literature, which Tertullian first noted of scripture: semper habet aliquid relegentibus, however frequently we read it, we shall always meet with something new."
Darren Koolman, in his Translator's Preface to The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni
Comments by knitandpurl
knitandpurl commented on the word hiemal
"She tossed her spectacles onto the bed and lit a candle. Crossed the room and opened the window as wide as it would go, beckoning in a hiemal breeze."
Keeper of Enchanted Rooms by Charlie N. Holmberg
April 6, 2023
knitandpurl commented on the word tirrivee
"She hadn't put any wards in the living room or adjoining sunroom, and dark shadows roiled within, as though the house were having a tirrivee at having been forced into order."
Keeper of Enchanted Rooms by Charlie N. Holmberg
April 6, 2023
knitandpurl commented on the word galliard
"A landsman could hardly have worn this garb and shown his face, and worn and shown them both with such a galliard air, without undergoing stern question before a magistrate, and probably incurring fine or imprisonment, or perhaps an exhibition in the stocks."
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
March 23, 2023
knitandpurl commented on the word irrefragable
"We have had, and may still have, worse things to tell of him; but none, we apprehend, so pitiably weak; no evidence, at once so slight and so irrefragable, of a subtle disease, that had long since begun to eat into the real substance of his character."
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
March 22, 2023
knitandpurl commented on the word meed
"The helpful inmate had departed, without one backward glance to gather up the meed of gratitude, if any were in the hearts of those whom she had served so zealously."
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
March 20, 2023
knitandpurl commented on the word besom
"The besom of reform has swept him out of office; and a worthier successor wears his dignity and pockets his emoluments."
-- From The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
March 15, 2023
knitandpurl commented on the word aedicula
"I give him a pamphlet gladly, and he places it on a pile of other pamphlets from other companies, on the handy pamphlet table in his home's entryway, an aedicula to life's mysterious accumulation of printed collateral."
Temporary by Hilary Leichter, p 133 of the Coffee House Press paperback
August 15, 2021
knitandpurl commented on the word chrysoprase
"Sometimes they made islands or great mountains enclosing lakes of deep turquoise-blue, or liquid amber, or chrysoprase-green; sometimes dark headlands jutted into strange, lost seas; sometimes slender strips of wonderful lands joined other wonderful lands together."
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
June 28, 2020
knitandpurl commented on the word serac
"On the way a serac falls and the waist of a glacier—a series of accumulation crevasses—crumbles."
The Future of Ice by Gretel Ehrlich, p 33 of the Vintage paperback edition
August 2, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word pingo
"What's left behind are new surfaces: kettle moraines, outwash plains, pingos, and scoured barren grounds."
The Future of Ice by Gretel Ehrlich, p 33 of the Vintage paperback edition
August 2, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word guanaco
"In the mountains behind Ushuaia lived the Selk'nam (also known as Ona) Indians, guanaco-robed hunters of the harsh Fuegean mountains and plains, whom the Yamana feared."
iThe Future of Ice by Gretel Ehrlich, p 13 of the Vintage paperback edition
August 2, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word orthodromic
"I followed the orthodromic routes of migrating arctic birds, their great, arcing circles as they flew between Arctic and the icy coasts and islets of the South Atlantic Ocean: arctic terns, long-tailed skuas, jaegers, and sanderlings, among others."
The Future of Ice by Gretel Ehrlich, p xv of the Vintage paperback edition
August 1, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word tumblehome
"This took a considerable time, and Stephen looked steadily about him, examining the cabin from side to side: it was like a larger version of the Desaix's stateroom (how glad he was the Desaix was safe) and it, too, was singularly beautiful and full of light – the same range of curved stern-windows, the same inward-leaning side-walls (the ship's tumblehome, in fact) and the same close, massive white-painted beams overhead in extraordinarily long pure curves right across from one side to another: a room in which common domestic geometry had no say."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 407 of the Norton paperback edition
July 18, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word grego
"Jack stuffed his glass into the pocket of the grego Stephen had brought him, ran up to the masthead, twined himself firmly into the rigging and trained the telescope in the direction of the pointing arm."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 162 of the Norton paperback edition
July 13, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word genet
"The felucca was almost touching now, and a tame genet – a usual creature in Barbary craft, on account of the rats – stood on the rail, looking eagerly up, ready to spring."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 156 of the Norton paperback edition
July 13, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word pledget
"A sloop with the depth of a mere ten feet ten inches cannot rival a ship of the line for dank airless obscurity below; but the Sophie did astonishingly well, and Stephen was obliged to call for another lantern to check and lay out his instruments and the meagre store of bandages, lint, tourniquets and pledgets."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 130 of the Norton paperback edition
July 13, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word kelson
"But even so, this was a comfortable height. Eighty-seven feet less the depth of the kelson – say seventy-five."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 87 of the Norton paperback edition
July 13, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word catharping
"He took two or three turns, looking up at the yards: they were braced as sharp as the main and foremast shrouds would allow, but they were not as sharp as they might have been in an ideal world, and he made a mental note to tell the bosun to set up cross catharpings – they might gain three or four degrees."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 74 of the Norton paperback edition
July 8, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word spirketting
"'Don't ee do it, sir!' he cried, covering the touch-hole with his hand. 'If you could but see her poor knees – and the spirketting started in five separate places, oh dear, oh dear.'"
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 70 of the Norton paperback edition
July 8, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word timoneer
"'Keep her so,' he said to the timoneer, and gave the order, the long-expected and very welcome order, to pipe to dinner."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 70 of the Norton paperback edition
July 8, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word cascabel
"He showed Jack the two twelve-pounders with great good will. 'As pretty a pair as the heart of man could desire,' he said, stroking their cascabels as Jack signed for them; but after that his mood seemed to change – there were several other captains in front of Jack – fair was fair – turn and turn about – them thirty-sixes were all in the way and would have to be moved first – he was precious short of hands."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 62 of the Norton paperback edition
July 8, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word neume
"In any case, his mind was too busy to be seeking after an elusive neume, for he was about to report to a new captain, a man upon whom his comfort and ease of mind was to depend, to say nothing of his reputation, career and prospects of advancement."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 54 of the Norton paperback edition
July 8, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word wheatear
"Black wheatears that must have a brood not far: one of the smaller eagles in the sky."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 53 of the Norton paperback edition
July 8, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word cistus
"How did he manage to make a living in the sparse thin grass of that stony, sun-beaten landscape, so severe and parched, with no more cover than a few tumbles of pale stone, a few low creeping hook-thorned caper-bushes and a cistus whose name Stephen did not know?"
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 53 of the Norton paperback edition
July 8, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word evert
"And where should we be without them, God forbid: and, indeed, the skill and dispatch and dexterity with which Mr Florey at the hospital here everted Mr Browne's eparterial bronchus would have amazed and delighted you."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 37 of the Norton paperback edition
July 5, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word phthisis
"My patient died at sea and we buried him up there by St. Philip's: poor fellow, he was in the last stages of phthisis."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 37 of the Norton paperback edition
July 5, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word phanerogam
"It was not until I had been some years in Ireland and had written my little work on the phanerogams of Upper Ossory that I came to understand how monstrously I had wasted my time."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 36 of the Norton paperback edition
July 5, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word dunnage
"But I shall sleep aboard, of course; so pray be good enough to send a boat for my chest and dunnage."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 32 of the Norton paperback edition
July 5, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word puddening
"She bore as much resemblance to her ordinary self as the rigid bosun, sweating in a uniform coat that must have been shaped with an adze, did to the same man in his shirt-sleeves, puddening the topsail yard in a heavy swell; yet there was an essential relationship, and the snowy sweep of the deck, the painful brilliance of the two brass quarter-deck four-pounders, the precision of the cylinders in the cable-tier and the parade-ground neatness of the galley's pots and tubs all had a meaning."
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 30 of the Norton paperback edition
July 5, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word bullace
Come buy, come buy:
Our grapes fresh from the vine,
Pomegranates full and fine
Dates and sharp bullaces
(from "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti)
March 25, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word haver
"Then again she liked the idea of herself up in the air with her compound eyes, hovering, havering, gathering data."
Crudo by Olivia Laing, p 10
January 13, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word miotic
""We're not hurting anyone," Beth said, still rocking, but with a new composure, her lips wiped, her eyes miotic, blue."
"Show Recent Some Love" by Sam Lipsyte, p 65 of the November 19, 2018 issues of the New Yorker
January 12, 2019
knitandpurl commented on the word fipple
"The book's cover features a painting by the nineteenth-century artist Jean Léone Gérôme titled The Snake Charmer. A blue-tiled wall, an audience of armed men, a fipple flute player, and a naked boy whose back is to us. A large, thick snake is coiled around the boy's muscular body."
Too Much and Not the Mood by Durga Chew-Bose, p 34
May 19, 2018
knitandpurl commented on the word shemozzle
""That excuse would do if this was an ordinary day," she replied. "But there's a bit of a shemozzle on, my children. As you may have heard.""
Concluding by Henry Green, p 91 of the New Directions paperback
May 7, 2018
knitandpurl commented on the word tamasha
""And such a day of it altogether, with the tamasha this evening" Edge continued."
Concluding by Henry Green, p 11 of the New Directions paperback
May 4, 2018
knitandpurl commented on the word goffer
"I saw her tossing newly gauffred curls as the open roadster headed east, away from Ollie..."
Talking It Over by Julian Barnes, p 104
March 28, 2018
knitandpurl commented on the word frangible
"Rather I was a simple, a frangible petitioner, assisted only by the goddess Flora."
Talking It Over by Julian Barnes, p 90
March 28, 2018
knitandpurl commented on the word rebarbative
"They took me home that night in Gillian's rebarbatively quotidian motor-car."
Talking It Over by Julian Barnes, p 48
March 28, 2018
knitandpurl commented on the word moidore
"He practically had me signed up for the European Monetary System when all I wanted was to touch him for a gold moidore."
Talking It Over by Julian Barnes, p 29
March 28, 2018
knitandpurl commented on the word tufa
"On the walls of the Castel dell'Ovo, Carlo Andreoli makes out the signs of the sea, the soft tufa eroded by the ever-rising damp, spurts of froth appear, stars flicker, fireworks in the distance, white fires moving, renewing."
Malacqua by Nicola Pugliese, translated by Shaun Whiteside, p 10
January 8, 2018
knitandpurl commented on the word billabong
"The beauty of those two words—Moonee Ponds—dawned on me. They made me think of a chain of quiet billabongs under a blurred moon."
- From "Suburbia" by Helen Garner, p 22 in Everywhere I Look
November 29, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word hoon
"I know the op shop doesn't open till eleven on Saturdays, that the motor that roars and roars at 10 p.m. at the bottom of the street is not some crazed hoon but the railway men mending the line."
From "White Paint and Calico" by Helen Garner, p 18 of Everywhere I Look
November 29, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word venturi
"In old trucks, carburetors are finicky: sensitive to particles, to climate, to air, to residue, and to tinkering. Gasoline congeals in the carburetor's orifices, plugging the venturis with a gelatinous film."
Fish in Exile by Vi Khi Nao, p 25
May 23, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word daedal
"Her heels click as she descends into the street. Alone, I turn to face the wall. I stare at the daedal patterns on the wallpaper."
Fish in Exile by Vi Khi Nao, p 21
May 23, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word guiro
"The sound is like a credit card being scraped over a comb, or a guiro percussion instrument or, like the corncrake's onomatopoeic Latin name, Crex crex."
The Outrun by Amy Liptrot, p 124
May 9, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word muricate
"And I recalled the sluggish misgivings I'd felt when the man took the money out of my hand and held up a tethered bundle of muricated sprigs for me to somehow take hold of in return."
Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett, p 159
April 22, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word costive
"In many ways this aerated point of view appeared more troubling than the costive statement from which it had originated, and I was quite defeated in my efforts to distinguish anything amusing about it."
Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett, p 56
April 19, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word minacious
"These peering tributaries are in amongst the other stones and stars, but they are not quite of them, I'd continue, warming to my minacious theme."
Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett, p 48
April 19, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word adventitious
"It had something to do with love. About the essential brutality of love. About those adventitious souls who deliberately seek out love as a prime agent of total self-immolation."
Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett, p 11
April 19, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word burgoo
"But shake out a palmful of flaked almonds and you'll see they closely resemble fingernails that have come away from a hand which has just seen the light of day.
Black jam and blanched fingernails, slowly sinking into the oozing burgoo!"
Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett, pp 5-6
April 17, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word dreich
"It was a bitter cold Sunday, wet and misty, dismal, dreich, everything as dripping and grey as only Inverness in November can be; we stood at the Memorial by the river in our uniforms with the Provost and his wife and some people from the council and the British Legion, and we each stepped forward in turn below the names carved on it to do this thing, the weight of which, the meaning and resonance of which, I didn't really understand, thought I'd thought I knew all about war and the wars, until I got home after it and my parents, with a kindness that was quiet and serious, sat me down in the warm back room, made me a mug of hot chocolate then sat there with me in a silence, not a companionable silence, more mindful than that."
"Good voice" by Ali Smith, p 35 of Public Library and Other Stories
February 20, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word crubeen
"You can tell me at supper. Aunt Oona's having the whole family over for Irish stew and crubeens."
Crosstalk by Connie Willis, p 27
February 14, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word mavourneen
"Aunt Oona's messages—except for three "Where are you, mavourneen?" inquiries—were all reminders that Sean O'Reilly was planning to read "The Passing of the Gael" at the Daughters of Ireland meeting, and the whole family was going."
Crosstalk by Connie Willis, pp 11-12
February 13, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word pelorus
"No: I hold you a pelorus, a flexing mirror, strange quarters for the wind of God."
The Bone People by Keri Hulme, p 535
February 12, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word deiseal
"Her left hand is studded by four silverset cabochons of greenstone, and there's a star sapphire with three dolphins circling it deiseal in gold on her right hand."
The Bone People by Keri Hulme, p 299
February 10, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word bidibid
Common name for several Acaena species in New Zealand; they have burrs.
"Two days ago in the Duke, and still the hooks in that conversation stick in her throat like a half-swallowed bidibid."
The Bone People by Keri Hulme, p 168
February 9, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word gyrovague
"I have taken to wandering a lot, gyrovague, te kaihau."
The Bone People by Keri Hulme, p 118
February 8, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word mathom
""It was a sore subject. Once upon a time it was full of trinkets and junky glass stuff, the sort people give you but you never really need."
"Mathoms.""
The Bone People by Keri Hulme, p 100
February 7, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word puha
""Come on," she says to the entranced child, "downstairs and help us collect some puha to go with them.""
The Bone People by Keri Hulme, p 84
February 7, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word broch
"An enemy inside my broch ... a burglar ensconced here."
The Bone People by Keri Hulme, p 40
February 5, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word fuccoid
Actually fucoid but, as it appears in The Bone People by Keri Hulme:
""The sole midlittoral fuccoid," she intones solemnly, and squashes a bead of it under the butt of her stick."
February 5, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word puriri
"How's Tisco?"
"Same as ever. His magnum opus just gets longer and longer, and the title now changes daily."
"What was it, last you heard?"
"The Proud Puriri of Percipience ... A Disturbingly Dialectical Distillation of This Nation's Solipsistic Soul, Wrought from the Fabric of Our Unconscious and the Wiry Strands of a No. 9 Sable Brush..."
Hicksville by Dylan Horrocks, p 74
February 3, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word polypore
"Overhead, lounging across doorways and oblivious to my progress, floated half-naked stucco women with dusty bosoms; higher still, edging towards the invisible land that extends behind us, the heads of National Revivalists grew from the facades like giant polypores."
Empty Streets by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 87 of the Dalkey Archive paperback edition
January 17, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word hornpout
"He had two deep folds in his cheeks running from his nostrils past his mouth and the long tuft of black beard on his chin was tied into three little tails like the barbels of a cranky hornpout."
The Luck Uglies by Paul Durham, p 141
January 9, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word barbel
"He had two deep folds in his cheeks running from his nostrils past his mouth and the long tuft of black beard on his chin was tied into three little tails like the barbels of a cranky hornpout."
The Luck Uglies by Paul Durham, p 141
January 9, 2017
knitandpurl commented on the word oscitant
"Bryony is not having her first drink of today until 18.00 so the big question is what to do between now and then. The obvious answer is admin, but that is very boring. And also quite hard at this lazy, pre-evening, pinkish, oscitant time of day."
The Seed Collectors by Scarlett Thomas, p 337
December 30, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word wharling
"Neither were we dwarfish, or of a giantlike stature, but proportional, with brown hair, sound teeth, sweet breath, and tunable voices—not given to wharling in the throat, I mean, or speaking through the nose, unless we had a cold—yet we were none so prone to beauty as she, and I perhaps least of them all."
Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton
December 12, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word patibulary
"And then, when he had finished his supper, he would get out his collection of patibulary treasures, and over a bowl of negus finger lovingly the various bits of gallows rope, the blood-stained glove of a murdered strumpet, the piece of amber worn as a charm by a notorious brigand chief, and gloat over the stealthy steps of his pet tiger, the Law."
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, p 153 of the Cold Spring Press paperback
December 6, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word ferret
I didn't know this in the sense of "A narrow piece of tape used to bind or edge fabric" until this:
"If you remember, in the eye of the law fairy fruit was regarded as woven silk, and many days were wasted in a learned discussion of the various characteristics of gold tissues, stick tuftaffities, figured satins, wrought grograines, silk mohair and ferret ribbons."
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, p 113 of the Cold Spring Press paperback
December 6, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word carminative
"Let mental suffering be intense enough, and it becomes a sort of carminative."
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, p 98 of the Cold Spring Press paperback
December 6, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word doiter
"Please, Master Ranulph, be a good chap and tell me what took you at supper time when that doitered old weaver came in. You gave me quite a turn, screaming like that."
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, p 65 of the Cold Spring Press paperback
December 6, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word cockchafer
"Dame Marigold, as she sat watching him, felt that he was rather like a cockchafer that had just flounced in through the open window, and, with a small, smacking sound, was bouncing itself backwards and forwards against its own shadow on the ceiling – a shadow that looked like a big, black velvety moth."
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, p 35 of the Cold Spring Press paperback edition
November 27, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word barton
"Every point of interest, every clue to the past, every quoit and barrow, every wayside cross, every round and camp and every ancient barton of west Cornwall draws his foot-borne curiosity."
Rising Ground by Philip Marsden, p 192 of the University of Chicago Press hardcover
September 26, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word pedunculate
"Around the creek were a number of pedunculate oaks that present something of a puzzle."
Rising Ground by Philip Marsden, p 172 of the University of Chicago Press hardcover
September 26, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word rhyne
"Early the next morning, I rose at dawn to walk over the hill to Glastonbury. I'd tried once before, one January years earlier, but fell in a rhyne down on the Levels and lost heart."
Rising Ground by Philip Marsden, p 103 of the University of Chicago Press hardcover
September 26, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word sutler
"The Arthurian tales have more recently brought other camp-followers to Tintagel, the sutlers of crystals and wind-chimes, the tarot-readers and soul-curers."
Rising Ground by Philip Marsden, p 88 of the University of Chicago Press hardcover
September 26, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word phreatic
"I remembered the phreatic, throat-like shape from years ago; and the smell – heavy and stagnant – of something I could never quite identify."
Rising Ground by Philip Marsden, p 7 of the University of Chicago Press hardcover
September 21, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word piker
"When one investigator in New York started to negotiate the terms of leaving a bar with a woman late at night, she demanded that he buy her a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey. And while he was it it, could he come with her to the butcher to pay an outstanding bill? (It never seems to occur to the investigators that the women they write up might have recognized them for what they were, and decided to mess around.)
'I told her all the butcher shops were closed now,' he wrote, 'and I didn't care to travel around from store to store, she got sore at me and called me a piker and told me to beat it.'"
Labor of Love by Moira Weigel, p 22
August 31, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word cicatrice
"A woman reclines in a long dress with fine floral patterning on a bed with a checkered bedspread. Her head scarf is polka-dotted. The bed is placed in front of a wall, which is draped with a paisley cloth. And ever her face is marked with cicatrices."
"Portrait of a Lady" by Teju Cole, p 129 of Known and Strange Things
August 20, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word comminuted
"He had a feeling for the inanimate, too, for ruins and comminuted landscapes, places that have been reduced to their smallest units by the forces of nature and history."
"Poetry of the Disregarded" by Teju Cole, p 42 of Known and Strange Things
August 18, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word lazzarone
"In the Neapolitan country, where everybody was a spy, a soldier, a priest, or a lazzarone, the shameless beggars of all four denominations incessantly pounced on the Bottle and made it a pretext for extorting money from me."
- "The Italian Prisoner" by Charles Dickens, in The Uncommercial Traveller
July 24, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word barathea
"I wore a suit of barathea I'd ordered special. The only way you can clean that fabric is with gasoline."
We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge, p 233
July 10, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word lenite
"Every cloud lenites the purple capital letters of the pirouetting peaks of the mountains."
The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 169
June 5, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word bowsie
"The Master called me that too, did he. Say it again, Margaret... A bowsie! A bowsie, Margaret!"
The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 167
(http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/bowsie)
June 5, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word latchico
"Every other day she was choking with a cold. But there wasn't much wrong with her voice on those days. "If I wasn't hoarse," she'd say to you after the funeral, "I would really have keened him." The lying latchico!"
The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 141
June 5, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word culchie
""You have a crude culchie mind," he said, pissing himself laughing. "They're only pictures. They won't do you any harm.""
The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 135
June 5, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word langer
"How would Little Kate know anything then, except that her tongue is as long as a langer?"
The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 90
June 5, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word skanger
"...So I only had ten miserable pounds worth of an altar, despite the fact that I shitted bricks chasing every old skanger and scum bucket putting money on their altars."
The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 70
June 5, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word oxter
"I swear you won't hear a bleep or a squeal out of her until she is stuffed up to the oxter."
The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 67
June 5, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word stocious
"But it was when he got really stocious—on a fair day, or a Friday, or whatever—that's when we heard the real fun."
The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 52
June 5, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word poteen
""Downing poteen like water," she said. Off I went. He was out of his tree and nobody in the house was able to hold him down. You couldn't say they weren't a bunch of wimps..."
The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 37
June 5, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word haggard
"I was spreading a bit of manure for Patrick down in Garry Dyne when one of Tommy's young ones came up to me. "Maggie Frances is dying," she said. And what do you know, Kitty, the young one, was just going in the door when I reached the end of the haggard."
The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 7
June 5, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word crawthumper
"I have the crucifix on my breast anyway, the one I bought myself at the mission...But where's the black one that Tom's wife, Tom the crawthumper, brought me from Knock, that last time they had to lock him up?"
The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 3
June 5, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word angary
"She supposed it was inevitable that, in due time, these men would take those liberties with her that have ever been claimed as angary by irregular fighting men, who have willfully severed themselves from the softening feminine influence of civilized society, with those women who have had the misfortune to become their captives."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 469 of the Spectra trade paperback
May 26, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word decussate
"The unmarked, decussating paths would have been confusing to anyone but a native."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 375 of the Spectra trade paperback
May 25, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word besprent
"As far as Miranda could see—all the way to Nanjing, maybe—it was lined with Western and Nipponese boutiques and department stores, and the airspace above the street was besprent with almond-size aerostats, each with its own cine camera and pattern-recognition ware to watch for suspicious-looking congregations of young men who might be Fist cells."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 297 of the Spectra trade paperback
May 24, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word barkentine
"One day a barkentine with red sails appeared in the bay, and a red-headed man with a red beard came to shore."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 197 of the Spectra trade paperback
May 22, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word nefandous
"Many of the persons who held such opinions were, of course, guilty of the most nefandous conduct themselves, and yet saw no paradox in holding such views because they were not hypocrites themselves—they took no moral stances and lived by none."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 191 of the Spectra trade paperback
May 22, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word enchiridion
In The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is also called a "Propaedeutic Enchiridion" (p 184 of the Spectra trade paperback edition)
May 22, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word propaeduetic
"preparatory study or instruction", per Merriam-Webster
In The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is also called a "Propaedeutic Enchiridion" (p 184 of the Spectra trade paperback edition)
May 22, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word grith
"Dr. X was unusually clever at taking advantage of the principle of grith, or right of refuge, which in modern usage simply meant that Coastal Republic officials like Judge Fang could not enter the Celestial Kingdom and arrest someone like Dr. X."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 126 of the Spectra trade paperback
May 19, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word nacelle
"The nacelles containing the tiny air turbines, which gave such devices the power to propel themselves through the air, were prominent; it was built for speed."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 98 of the Spectra trade paperback
May 19, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word buller
"Before long the streets widened, and the hush of tires on pavement blended with the buller of waves against the gradual shores of Pudong."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 84 of the Spectra trade paperback
May 19, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word paroemiological
"I hope the above poem illuminates the ideas I only touched on during our meeting of Tuesday last, and that it may contribute to your paroemiological studies."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 83 of the Spectra trade paperback
paroemiology (M-W) is "the subject of proverbs"
May 19, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word foramen
"This was nothing more than a small propeller, or series of them, mounted in a tubular foramen wrought through the body of the aerostat, drawing in air at one end and forcing it out the other to generate thrust."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 56 of the Spectra trade paperback
May 17, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word hederate
"If a campus was a green quadrilateral described by hulking, hederated Gothics, then this was a campus."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 47 of the Spectra trade paperback
May 17, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word laager
"Bud had paid a few visits to the local laager, studied some of their training ractives on his home mediatron, put in some extra hours at the gym trying to meet their physical standards, even gone to a couple of horrific bible-study sessions."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 30 of the Spectra trade paperback
May 17, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word eutactic
"The engineers of the Royal Vacuum Utility were already at work expanding the eutactic environment."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 36 of the Spectra trade paperback
May 17, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word coarct
"All the other thetes, coarcted into the tacky little claves belonging to their synthetic phyles, turning up their own mediatrons to drown out the Senderos, setting off firecrackers or guns—he could never tell them apart—and a few internal-combustion hobbyists starting up their primitive full-lane vehicles, the louder the better."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 35 of the Spectra trade paperback
May 17, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word tantivy
"As soon as he caught Bud's eye, he kicked it up another gear, to a tantivy."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 31 of the Spectra trade paperback
May 17, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word coenobitical
"There were a bunch of coenobitical phyles—religious tribes—that took people of all races, but most of them weren't very powerful and didn't have turf in the Leased Territories."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 30 of the Spectra trade paperback
May 17, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word catachthonic
"Lying as close as it did to Source Victoria, the park was riddled with catachthonic Feed lines, and anything could be grown there on short notice."
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 13
May 15, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word thete
One of the section titles in The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson is "A thete visits a mod parlor; noteworthy features of modern armaments." Per the Collins English Dictionary (http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/thete), a thete was "a member of the lowest order of freeman in ancient Athens."
May 15, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word stringcourse
"It didn't look like a difficult task, since the back of each terrace was studded with all kinds of flues, hooks, windowsills, gas pipes, stringcourses, planks of wood, missing bricks, and irregular patches."
A Plague of Bogles by Catherine Jinks, p 270 of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt hardcover edition
April 13, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word calque
"Christine's Chemin de long estude is a calque of Dante's "lungo studio," that is, Christine explicitly conceives her literary career as a learned continuation in the vernacular of the poetic archievement of Vergil."
- Earl Jeffrey Richards's Introduction to Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies, pp xlvii-xlviii of the Persea books 1998 paperback
January 23, 2016
knitandpurl commented on the word spencer
"Her top half was clothed in a spencer, whose hardier material hid the curves her sodden dress could not fail to display. The whole shining sinuous length of her tail emerged from her dress below."
Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, p 305
November 14, 2015
knitandpurl commented on the word bohea
"And have you seen this Miss Prunella Gentleman, of whom so much is said?" said Lady Throgmorton, as she sat supping a cup of black bohea with her friend Alethea Gray."
- Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, p 226
November 14, 2015
knitandpurl commented on the word geas
"The Sorcerer Royal's servants had formerly been bond by a geas against disclosure of any detail of his household affairs, breach of which was visited by the most terrible revenge."
Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, p 188
November 14, 2015
knitandpurl commented on the word sonsy
"Mrs. Lale was a sonsy, comfortable-looking creature, and it seemed as though a smile would better fit her countenance than its angular look of disapprobation."
Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, p 123
November 13, 2015
knitandpurl commented on the word goety
""You should certainly include a chapter on goety," said Sir Stephen."
Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, p 83
November 12, 2015
knitandpurl commented on the word litotes
"He was not exactly ugly (a litotes)."
Oreo by Fran Ross, p 182 of the New Directions paperback
October 7, 2015
knitandpurl commented on the word blattid
"Oreo held her breath in case she had made a drastic error and had mentioned the roach problem in one of the three buildings in New York that did not have them.
Mrs. Schwartz gave not an eye-narrow, not a lash-flutter. Oreo was reassured that she had not blown her cover through a blattid blunder."
- Oreo by Fran Ross, p 176 of the New Directions paperback
October 7, 2015
knitandpurl commented on the word dicty
""Not speaking, huh? Dicty, ain't you, Miss Siditty? Okay, hello, small stuff," he said in a put-down voice."
Oreo by Fran Ross, p 149 of the New Directions paperback edition
October 7, 2015
knitandpurl commented on the word anseriform
"Occasionally he paused to buff his nails, perking his chest with anseriform hauteur."
Oreo by Fran Ross, p 147 of the New Directions paperback edition
October 7, 2015
knitandpurl commented on the word emprise
"She also decided that since this was, after all, her quest (so far a matter of low emprise), she would cross all the other clues off her list whenever she felt justified in doing so."
- Oreo by Fran Ross, p 97 of the New Directions paperback edition
October 6, 2015
knitandpurl commented on the word fulgurate
"But the Great Report won't be composed in a study; it will come out of the jungle, breaking cover like some colourful, fantastic beast, a species never seen before, a brand-new genus, flashing, sparkling—fulgurating—high above the tree-line, there for all to see."
Satin Island by Tom McCarthy, p 62 of the Knopf hardcover edition
July 6, 2015
knitandpurl commented on the word garth
"So the little houses is all forsook. They have big garths round them, and pasture for grass-letting—sheep and that—and grand hayfields."
- "Bell and Harry" by Jane Gardam, in The Hollow Land, p 11 of the Europa Editions paperback
April 15, 2015
knitandpurl commented on the word comminution
"I hadn't fought ten seconds before I felt this softness in him, realized all that quality of modern upper-class England that never goes to the quick, that hedges about rules and those petty points of honour that are the ultimate comminution of honour, that claims credit for things demonstrably half done."
Tono-Bungay by H.G. Wells, p 31 of the Everyman paperback
March 12, 2015
knitandpurl commented on the word blackavised
"I made the only possible reply by a rush at him. 'Hello!' he cried, at my blackavised attack."
Tono-Bungay by H.G. Wells, p 31 of the Everyman paperback
March 12, 2015
knitandpurl commented on the word skelf
"A whole time can reduce down to a single taste, a moment. A whole person down to the skelf of a self."
Hotel World by Ali Smith, pp 37-38 of the Anchor paperback edition
February 3, 2015
knitandpurl commented on the word bewray
"I fancied it was caution, but in truth it was terror—I near bewrayed myself."
The Accidental Highwayman by Ben Tripp, p 143
January 12, 2015
knitandpurl commented on the word glunch
""I am not," he said, "having that lummock-de-troll glunching about this place!""
Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones, p 38 of the Greenwillow hardcover edition
January 5, 2015
knitandpurl commented on the word bakkie
"Or,
"She goes to sleep on the seat taken from the broken-down bakkie as the husband listens to the radio for news of the uprising—""
"apartment" by Rachel Zucker, in The Pedestrians
December 27, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word tokonoma
"Entering, you first noticed the traditional tokonoma to the immediate right, while a closet took up the rest of that side of the wall."
The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide, translated by Eric Selland, p 21 of the New Directions paperback edition
October 24, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word gangue
"The creative man will not, then, be he who has deduced something new ex nihilo, btu he who has identified it, by intuition, by trial and error, by chance — or by that infinite patience which for Flaubert was a sign of genius — amid the gangue that enclosed it and concealed it from our eyes."
- Umberto Eco, in his foreword to Tristano by Nanni Balestrini
October 15, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word sistrum
" ... The sistrums clanked aghast/
as always and bees unstitched the marjoram as in the old
time and we non of us thought much about it . ..."
- "Saps at Sea" by John Ashbery, in Quick Question
October 11, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word ween
"O laborers, idle shepherds, come, a truth
I suspect once you've shifted
the blame to your flutes come undone,
I ween. No one knows how much
we've done to ourselves, nor I to each other,
cracked, before we were born."
- "The Queen's Apron" by John Ashbery, in Quick Question
October 11, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word spall
"The whole urban chaos spalls and before
we know it the subject has changed."
"More Reluctant," in Quick Question by John Ashbery
October 11, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word papirosa
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belomorkanal
"The traveller had taken off his cloak and looked very slender and elegant in his pinstripe suit. He was smoking a papirosa and giving instructions at the same time."
Pietr the Latvian by Georges Simenon, translated by David Bellos, p 11 of the Penguin paperback edition
October 7, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word titivate
"I did my bit, bringing up those blessed boxes. I leave the titivating to Lilian. She loves all that sort of thing. She can titivate for England, she can."
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters, p 18
September 24, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word iatrogenic
"The pill entered the market in 1996 and quickly became an iatrogenic disaster."
"The Antidote" by Ian Frazier, p 62 of the New Yorker's September 8, 2014 issue
September 7, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word dreech
See also http://www.bbc.co.uk/ulsterscots/words/dreigh - dreigh, dreich, dreech are all given as alternative spellings.
"The dreech weather had drawn in a few more than usual at this time of day but I saw no close acquaintance and I had a mind to drink a quiet pot of tea and glance at the early edition of the evening paper, content in my own company."
The Mist in the Mirror by Susan Hill, p 4 of the Vintage paperback edition
September 1, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word deodar
"As evening drew in, we turned a bend and caught a first glimpse of Simla's bungalows and country houses rising up from among the deodars of the ridge."
City of Djinns by William Dalrymple, p 315
July 16, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word atrament
"Orbiting the risen thought
That sang up to the atrament"
"Sheep Meadow" in The Ground by Rowan Ricardo Phillips
April 27, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word chatoyance
"And where once the crowds were mere pent peacocks,
Twiddling half chatoyances, shimmers in the dark,
Now only the dancers remain."
"Aubade: Vol. 2: The Underground Sessions" in "The Ground" by Rowan Ricardo Phillips
April 27, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word arroba
"Change your name, change your name, the arroba urged."
- "Apollo: Season Three" in "The Ground" by Rowan Ricardo Phillips
April 27, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word barding
"The white rat stepped cautiously into the room, nostrils flaring. Satisfied of its immediate safety, the rat darted up Teo's desk and sat atop her paperwork. It wore black velvet barding blazoned with a silver spiderweb; a leather scroll case the size of a cigarette hung around its neck."
Two Serpents Rise by Max Gladstone, p 65
April 20, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word terrane
April 13, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word scilla
"Angelica sniffed the darkness. "Cigars."
It could have been scillas for all Tonino cared."
The Magicians of Caprona by Diana Wynne Jones, p 158
March 15, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word pawky
"Mr. McLintock nodded, with a pawky sort of grin."
The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume 1 by Diana Wynne Jones, p 538
March 11, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word thaumaturge
"It is full of people working magic—warlocks, witches, thaumaturges, sorcerers, fakirs, conjurors, hexers, magicians, mages, shamans, diviners, and many more—from the lowest Certified witch right up o the most powerful of enchanters."
The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume 1, by Diana Wynne Jones
March 4, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word cathectic
"Dallington's story had satisfied both Lenox and Jenkins as to the motivation of the brother and the sister, a long cathectic hatred of Queen Victoria, bred into the bone by their ancestors and their father, and flourishing, perhaps, without the soft guidance of a mother."
An Old Betrayal by Charles Finch, p 266
March 4, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word chatelaine
"Sophronia raised up her Depraved Lens of Crispy Magnification, a present on her fifteenth birthday from Dimity's brother, Pillover. It was essentially a high-powered monocle on a stick, but useful enough to keep at all times hanging from a chatelaine at her waist."
Curtsies & Conspiracies by Gail Carriger, p 8
January 28, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word irrefragable
"In September I planted a line of spruce saplings along the west portico, against the better judgment of Rodgers—and now they have all but one of them died, which I view as final and irrefragable evidence that I have entered my senescence."
A Death in the Small Hours by Charles Finch, pp 274-275
January 17, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word salmis
"He helped himself gloomily to salmis of game."
Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers, p 75
January 6, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word acushla
"Parker, acushla, you're an honour to Scotland Yard."
Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers, p 34
January 5, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word muskeg
"Back in her apartment she pins Amsterdam to the wall above her bed, beneath another old postcard: four brightly painted totem poles and a few muskeg spruce, leaning over a marshy inlet."
Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith, p 13
January 3, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word parapraxis
"Then came the strange events that I wrote off at the time as a kind of self-undermining parapraxis. First I forgot to pack the book; then I forgot to collect my bag from the carousel in the airport."
The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas, p 277
January 1, 2014
knitandpurl commented on the word antipsoric
"It is one of those deep-acting, long-acting antipsoric medicines."
James Tyler Kent, quoted in The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas, p 118
December 30, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word polychrest
"After I've had some soup, I go and get in the bath with two of the homoeopathy books: Kent's Lectures on the Materia Medica and a rather strange-looking volume called Literary Portraits of the Polychrests."
The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas, p 117
December 30, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word stannary
"Elizabeth, heavily pregnant and desperate, was there waiting while her husband and sons tried to find work in the area, having been turned away from the Tavistock stannary."
PopCo by Scarlett Thomas, p 172 of the Harcourt paperback edition
December 1, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word kumera
"Roast chicken and kumera and peas from the back garden, and peaches and nectarines with cream for pudding, and Beverley had been allowed a glass of sherry."
Kehua! by Fay Weldon, p 185
October 29, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word macrocarpa
"Beyond the vision of her pumping knees on some desperate errand, and the bloodied dress above them, and playing in the yellow dust under the macrocarpa hedge, and a young women turning cartwheels on the lawn—whom she assumes to be Rita—she has only the scantiest memories of her very early life."
Kehua! by Fay Weldon, p 130
October 29, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word kauri
See citation on pohutakawa.
October 29, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word pohutakawa
"If you go up to Coromandel these days, up to the subtropical North, where the pohutakawa trees line the rocky coast, and the dolphins sport in a warm sea, and in the deep dark kauri forests where the tui birds break the silence and the bellbirds chime, you could well believe that the spirit of the taniwha has been put to sleep."
Kehua! by Fay Weldon, p 120
October 29, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word morepork
"I remember what Aroha said about the kehua, the spirits of the homeless dead, and how they like to inhabit animals and birds: the screech of the morepork bird in the velvety Maori night is a case in point."
Kehua! by Fay Weldon, p 40
October 27, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word spindleberry
"The early sun is making the snow sparkle, and the red spindleberries glow in the hedge the far side of the garden, so it's all white, green and red, like the Italian flag."
Kehua! by Fay Weldon, p 32
October 27, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word kehua
At the start of Kehua! by Fay Weldon, there's this:
"May the Maori amongst you excuse this fictional foray
into your world, for which, believe me,
I have the greatest respect, having as a child
in the Coromandel encountered both taniwha and kehua."
October 26, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word taniwha
At the start of Kehua! by Fay Weldon, there's this:
"May the Maori amongst you excuse this fictional foray
into your world, for which, believe me,
I have the greatest respect, having as a child
in the Coromandel encountered both taniwha and kehua."
October 26, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word muntin
"And then came the mud. In it sloshed, through the broken windows. Thick mud, watery mud, rocky mud, mud with beveled-glass shards, mud with window muntins, mud with grass, mud with barbecue utensils, mud with a mosaic birdbath."
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, p 76
October 24, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word prorogue
"Turning up the deep astrachan collar of his long coat, the stranger swept out of the shop, with the air, as Miss Fritten afterwards described it, of a Satrap proroguing a Sanhedrin. Whether such a pleasant function ever fell to a Satrap's lot she was not quite certain, but the simile faithfully conveyed her meaning to a large circle of acquaintances."
"Quail Seed" by Saki, in The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories (p 139 of the NYRB edition)
October 14, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word syce
"We managed to get the ponies loose in time, and the syce swam the whole lot of them off to the nearest rising ground."
"The Guests" by Saki, p 119 of The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories (NYRB Edition)
October 14, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word rickyard
The poultry followed her in interested fashion, and swine grunted interrogations at her from behind the bars of their sties, but barnyard and rickyard, orchard and stables and dairy, gave no reward to her search.
"The Cobweb" by Saki, p 109 of The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories (NYRB paperback)
October 14, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word combe
"And yet, for all that it stood so well in the centre of human bustle, its long, latticed window, with the wide window-seat, built into an embrasure beyond the huge fireplace, looked out on a wild spreading view of hill and heather and wooded combe."
"The Cobweb" by Saki, p 104 of The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories (NYRB paperback)
October 14, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word plantigrade
"As for Cassandra, who was expected to improvise her own prophecies, she appeared to be as incapable of taking flying leaps into futurity as of executing more than a severely plantigrade walk across the stage."
"The Peace Offering" by Saki, p 75 of The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories (NYRB paperback)
October 14, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word hendiadys
"Now we've seen that justice will collapse through abuse of hendiadys."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 165
September 17, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word banausic
"Still, despite the tight shackles and endless drudgery, despite the difficulty in dealing with all this, how should I say, journalistic prose--for that's what it is: lifeless, banausic drivel that rushes like a torrent and lacks all color and rhythm, except that it seems to come in waves, but you could at least pace yourselves by contending with these waves one at a time, consider only the number of strokes to be made between each strike of the clock, instead of dwelling on the calendar."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 156
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word izba
"They took refuge in one of the izbas that are found dotted on the outskirts of Xochimilco's teeming suburbs."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 142
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word conticent
"The conticent hour
when the gondola's left for a neighboring dark,"
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 141
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word eschar
"So they gathered around a horrible toadstool covered in blemishes and eschars, for these made it look a fitting exemplar, or perhaps it was more a leprous garden gnome, who carried his personal tragedy with him everywhere he went, and because of his dual nationality bumped into us more often than not."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 134
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word anacoluthia
"How is it possible that within a belletrist culture like that one, there was so much admiration for the works of Zi--with their soppy sentimentalism and bumpkin sophistication, their bad grammar and archaic anacoluthia, and all those gigantic leaps away from the slightly credible to the wholly fabulous?"
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 129
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word pulque
"Beautiful, detailed notation by Aída on pulque and the agave plant."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 121
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word oscitation
"She opened with a recitation--interspersed with oscitations and eructations--of a monologue by the teenage actress in The Seagull."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 115
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word surd
"His voice was certainly the strangest I've heard from a creature of his kind-- at once surd and resonant, clipped and lyrical, with euphonious vowels broken by brusquely stressed consonants that reminded me a little of Careclough's Scottish brogue."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 114
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word instauration
"d) Once the cult of St. Mawr was born, it committed itself to what was called "the small instauration" and to "the little idiom.""
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 106
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word caducity
"The most observant of them called the period of caducity "the fall," and he'd usually announce its arrival out loud."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 90
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word enthymeme
"Accents has the original strip of paper a valuable addition to my bibliophile's treasury, which contains a false enthymeme or involuntary syllogism"
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 90
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word claudication
"Many years later, once we saw through his mask, that symbol of his claudication, we summoned the image of Von Aschenbach, as interpreted by Dirk Bogarde in the Visconti film (14, reference to Gathorne-Hardy, anecdote in the book about English public schools)."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 77
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word invunche
"On the threshold, motionless, stands the invunche."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, pp 71 and 72
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word paludinal
"A whole argot of sectarian terms to designate where: first, the "paludinal glitterati" in Septic Midrash, then the "phalansterian demographic" constructed to "contradict the anecdote.""
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 68
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word vellication
"Since then, having succeeded in restoring them to that previous state in which their livelihoods depended on a meager spring (one that delivers on a monthly basis), he eases a vellication of remorse with the thought that they would be amply remunerated with freedom of time and leisure, although he knows the leisure of redundancy cannot truly be enjoyed."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 55
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word apodictic
"I feel more assured by the incoherent babbling of a panhandler than by the apodictic pronouncements of philosophers."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 53
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word terricolous
"Critics and friends had already rebuked him for his honeyed volubility, and also that "nothing to say" which the terricolous Hardy suspected lay behind his ponderous, Tyrian diction."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 52
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word betise
"When he saw them again, on that morning in August after returning from a visit to the city, he found them quite as submissive and conceited as ever; and he, once again trapped in their especial variety of confessional antechamber (in which they oft be labored him with successions of halting effusions), sought escape by firing off--or more properly, stammering--a bêtise on the "perfumed scent" of his butler's arrhythmic respiration, which was indeed perceptible to him in more than one--and to more than one--sense."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 47
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word soteriology
"For more on the casuistry, the soteriology, and even the proctology of the letter X, see Edgar Lee Meaulnes."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 39
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word canorous
"Entre nous, her exuberant flaunting, her canorous bays, are they not in fact . . . symphonies?"
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 16
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word pleonasm
"If pleonasm is the soul of offense, at least I know when to shut up."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 13
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word pleonasm
"If pleonasm is the soul of offense, at least I know when to shut up."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 13
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word barracan
"Nicasio sits with his barracan jacket slightly open, his hand reaching--in plenipotentiary gesture--for his wallet ("ample as a library," according to Dos) so he can pay the bill."
The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 7
September 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word corybantic
Having now read The No Variations several times in the course of translating and editing, I was continually amused by its author's mock affectations, moved by his corybantic delight in language, and, despite the difficulty, I believe it has that quality proper to all fine literature, which Tertullian first noted of scripture: semper habet aliquid relegentibus, however frequently we read it, we shall always meet with something new."
Darren Koolman, in his Translator's Preface to The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni
September 12, 2013
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